A forum for whom?

One of the event at IT Expo was the launch of the Java Forum. The invite
sounded impressive: representatives of Sun Microsystems, IBM, Microsoft,
Netscape, Corel, Lotus, Borland, Novell, Oracle and Symantec. I hope I
havent forgotten anyone. It was the opportunity to meet at the same time
many of the big players in the Java field. Not to be missed.

After an introduction where we learned that ‘the Java Forum's
purpose is to offer an information channel and support network between the
principal Java ISVs and members of the Forum's principally corporate
audience of IT Directors and network managers’, it was at last the long
awaited Q&A time. First a general question gave Jeremy Gittins of Microsoft
the opportunity to express the strong commitment of Microsoft to everything
Java – no mention of J/Direct. Then I tried to start a discussion between
Simon Phipps of IBM and Jeremy Gittins. You see, it's not that often that
one has the opportunity to have representatives from both IBM and Microsoft at
the same time to talk about Java. It was the first time for me. I
wouldn't have missed such an opportunity. Well, to cut a long story short,
the MC told us that this wasn't the point of the announcement. It was
eventually revealed, after the event, that participants had been warned not to
make any comment on any of the other companies present. Disappointing,
isn't it?

Let's try to summarise some of the views on Java (expressed at
previous events). Sun Microsystems has started Java or Java started at Sun.
Whichever way it doesn't matter much now. Sun is trying to have Java
officially recognised as a standard but at the same time doesn't seem
willing to relinquish all its control. Microsoft has stated numerous time that
it is wholly committed to Java, but seems more committed to its own version of
Java. Java is primarily a client language/operating system/environment and
Microsoft has the biggest share of the desktop, hence it considers it can
control Java on the desktop and introduce ‘features’ such as
J/Direct. Both Sun and IBM promote Java as the way to go as it will give you
platform independence. Officially, they do not consider Microsoft as any threat
at all. Well, Netscape which embraces the same goals as its partners IBM and
Sun, does seem to consider Microsoft as a very real threat which shouldn't
be simply ignored. Novell is not as strong but has similar views.

In other words, it's a mess. The different point of views of the Pure
Java partners though not exactly the same appear to be compatible. Microsoft
has definitely a different approach. Simon Phipps commented rather cynically
about the recent announcement of J/Direct: ‘Microsoft felt Java had an
unfair advantage over ActiveX by being secure so decided to level the playing
field by breaking Java rather than by securing ActiveX.’ I believe I would
have had a better understanding of where Java is heading to if there had been a
frank open discussion between all the representatives present.

OK, so it's a forum with one voice where differences between ISVs are
muffled. It's probably better to hear the voice of the users. There we
face another problem: for the first year, the Forum is financed by these ISVs.
The Research Group, the Forum's organiser, is convinced that the simple
fact that all these ISVs are putting money in the kettle is enough to guarantee
its independence. Ahem, wasn't that a major issue for the United
Nations?